Work is the #1 cause of life stress for most people. Probably, this is not a surprise to you. What that research shows though is that your manager has as much impact on your mental health as your spouse. Burnout is real. Working hard and not being recognized, promoted or getting a pat on the back from time to time have consequences. There are ways to work around this, of course. You can change jobs. You can try to have “a conversation” with your manager. You can meditate. You can buy one of...
1 day ago • 1 min read
What a lot of risk? I recently saw people complaining about the “high IRRs” that some PPP developers were making. High IRRs. Greedy developers. Private sector making too much money. The usual music. Well… Look at the number of projects that have gone under. Especially those with demand risk. Real demand risk. Not “let’s pretend this is risky in a spreadsheet” risk. Actual traffic risk. Actual revenue risk. Actual “if people don’t show up, you don’t get paid” risk. And then tell me that 15% or...
3 days ago • 1 min read
Outcomes vs processes. This is the never-ending story of the project manager in any major infrastructure project. What to do. What to prioritise. Where to push. Where to let go. What matters. What is noise dressed up as “governance”. Well… A few days ago I had a discussion with one of my clients. I explained my views. Then, after the call, I sent him a message. WhatsApp. Yes. Not a 35-page PowerPoint. Not a colour-coded framework. Not a “strategic alignment deck” with triangles, arrows and...
4 days ago • 1 min read
Close to Pointe-Claire. Montreal, Canada. Circa 2011. A pen flies across the meeting room. Not metaphorically. A real pen. From the other side of the table. The guy receiving the missile activates his very sophisticated kung fu reflexes and leans to one side. Impact avoided. Silence. Everyone in the room freezes. Then he says: “Don’t get angry. If we don’t solve this now, things are going to get pretty bad for all of us. And in the blame game, nobody wins.” The meeting goes on. No more flying...
4 days ago • 1 min read
There are big, monumental, screw-ups…. Or “cagadas”. And then there are cagadas so big that someone should build a monument to them. The kind that doesn’t just destroy a project. It changes an industry. I’m thinking now about that traffic model that cost a traffic advisor millions and millions because its forecasts were more optimistic than Putin’s three days “special military operation” in Ukraine. That mistake changed the way PPPs with traffic risk were viewed. Contractually. Financially....
5 days ago • 2 min read
Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics did one of those experiments that sounds stupid… Not because you probably pay them with your taxes… But because you realise it explains half of the disasters in business. They took people to a forest. Then they gave them a simple instruction: “Walk in a straight line.” That’s it. No MBA. No strategy deck. No 147-page governance framework. Just walk straight. C’mon you can do it! Several participants were convinced they had done...
7 days ago • 1 min read
There is a famous story about President John F. Kennedy visiting NASA in 1961. While touring the facility, he met a janitor mopping the floor. Kennedy asked him what he did at NASA. “I’m helping put a man on the moon.” Beautiful… Maybe too beautiful to be true. But who cares… the point is brutal. Now, no question how, a few years later, NASA sent three men to the moon using computers weaker than my kid’s lullaby machine. One team. For real. One objective. For real. Not because of an org...
8 days ago • 1 min read
Your team is not weak. Your leadership is. You can hire the best people in the market. The sharpest commercial director. The most experienced technical lead. The planner who can see delays before they are even born. The lawyer who reads contracts like other people read Netflix subtitles. All beautiful. Wonderful. Very LinkedIn. But if you don’t empower them… If they need permission to breathe… If every decision has to go through seven committees, four “alignment sessions”, two steering groups...
9 days ago • 1 min read
In some meetings, what you really need is… A proper fart. Yes. Loud. Wet. Smelly. “Con dos cojon€s.” Or with two balls. I’m talking about those meetings with no life and no soul. Boring. No agenda. No direction. “Update meetings”, they call them. They could at least give you popcorn. Or coffee. Or a shot of caffeinated life. I don’t know. Look. There are, at least, 5 things you simply cannot do in meetings. The first one is having more than two people at the table… Although I understand this...
9 days ago • 1 min read